Kool Korner Sandwiches, the Cuban sandwich shop that opened six years ago in the Vestavia Hills City Center, has closed, but its owners hope to reopen soon in another location in the Vestavia Hills area.

Bill Ramirez, who co-owns Kool Korner with his father, 92-year-old Cuban immigrant Ildefonso Ramirez, told AL.com their lease expires at the end of this month, and they could not agree on a new lease with the managers of the property.

"This restaurant has meant a great deal to my dad," the younger Ramirez said. "It's his life. He loves to cook for people, and people come back to him and say they like his food.

"I'm sure it's the reason he feels so active and alive at 92, and I want to continue that."

Although relatively new to the Birmingham area, the sandwich shop's history goes back nearly four decades, when the senior Ramirez, after fleeing Fidel Castro's Cuba in early 1970s, settled in Atlanta and began selling Cuban sandwiches at a grocery store he and his wife opened there. After the store burned down, Ramirez opened Kool Korner in Atlanta's Midtown area, where it became a favorite with students at nearby Georgia Tech and made several "Best of Atlanta" lists over the years.

Kool Korner Sandwiches, which started in Atlanta, opened in this location in Vestavia Hills, Ala., in June 2009. Owners Ildesonso Ramirez, and his son, Bill, are looking for a new location after their lease expired. (Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)

Ramirez had to close his shop when the building was sold in 2008, and he moved to Birmingham to be near his son, Bill, and daughter-in-law, Haymee. Just a few months after moving here, though, he found a space in a former Firehouse Subs shop near the Vestavia Hills Publix, and he reopened Kool Korner in June 2009.

''I want to keep doing this not for the money,'' he said back then. ''Really, it's because I like doing this -- to make something good and to deal with the people and make friends.''

For the past six years, Ramirez has spent up to 70 hours a week at the shop, where he has treated his customers to the authentic pressed Cuban sandwiches that Southern food scholar John T. Edge once described as ''mojo-drenched exemplars of the plancha art" in his Garden & Gun magazine piece ''100 Southern Foods You Absolutely, Positively Must Try Before You Die."

Many of Ramirez's old Atlanta customers often stopped by when they were passing through Birmingham and filled their coolers with sandwiches to take home with them.